Hi all,

A while back there was some "press" about the then new ATI All In Wonder 9700? Pro and the big deal (for me anyway) was that it had something called the "cobra" hardware encoder chip. Supposedly it did mpeg encoding via it's hardware or at least it was hardware assisted mpeg encoding.

I'm currently using a 9000 Pro (software mpeg encoding) and am very happy with it. I'm thinking of getting the 9800 pro (if it also has hardware encoding as the 9700 was listed as having)

So I've been searching the ATI web site and can find NO mention of hardware mpeg encoding at all. I'm pretty sure I read a page there describing it in detail but no searches will find it.

I wonder if the 9700 AIWs did infact have this "cobra" mpeg encoder chip and/or if ATI abandoned it with the next release video card (the 9800 Pro) Anybody got any information on this ??

All Radeons 9700 and above have hardware acceleration for MPEG encode and decode (probably using the pixel shader). From what I understand, it's a separate hw encoder chip.

Rich, I know you're an ATI man, but I'd urge you to consider the Canopus MPEGPRO line. I have the USB 2.0 unit, and I've NEVER owned anything nearly as good. It blew my DVCII out of the water, and that had very good MPEG2 output.

The price is a little steep too, but man oh man my encoding is on easy street both in terms of quality and audio synch which is fantastic!

Mark

How much is "expensive" ?? The big advantage to the AIWs is of course the built in TV tuner.

I've since found information (it was like finding a needle in the haystack) about the 9700 & 9800 AIWs. I think I'll stick with my 9000 Pro for a while longer. Seems that the hardware encoded is really only an assist and not a full encoder. It "helps" the existing software encoding and not that much. Average decrease in CPU use with the 9700 and up hardware encoding as opposed to the all software prior versions is only about two (2) percent. So if you are using 98 percent of the CPU with your existing ATI MMC, the 9700 and 9800 Pro AIWs will drop that 96 percent. Big deal.

So the ATI 9800 is something like 450 bucks list. How much is that card you are talking about Mark ??

The Canopus MPEGPRO EMR (USB2.0), although you might prefer the MVR unit which is PCI is 499.00. Same quality in both, but the MVR has an output. No TV tuner.

Its a full hardware encoder with built in filtering that is very good at encoding older VHS. I can take any crappy old VHS and encode with perfect sync because it ...well it does some sort of signal correction that maintains it.

MPEG2 up to 15Mbps...sweet, and because the sync is perfect I can take that and reencode to MPEG1 with a very nice result. I can also reencode to SVCD of course, and even take the bitrate down with 2pass and get excellent quality.

Its direct MPEG1 encoding is ordinary however. So, although the unit has a few oddities it works out of the box and creates awesome results. The thing is so bloody turnkey quality-wise, that I don't need to spend much time in post production for simple programs.

Worth the dough.

mark

RICH have you considered any of the settop panasonic
DVD recorders i am testing a DRE30 and the results are very good. with your comp.panasonic it would be very easy to edit . just food for thought

I have three ReplayTVs PVRs here as well. Wrote my own program to allow me to list and extract their stored mpegs across my LAN to my computer for editing and authoring DVDs. Been doing that for a couple years.

I only use the ATI when I want that "perfect" best possible quality for that special show. Otherwise the ReplayTV is extremely easy to get things recorded in 7 Mb/s variable mpeg-2 at 720x480. Some guys have had problems with the mpeg format and audio sync issues. (sound familiar?) But just like my ATI experience, I've had no problem with sync using the ReplayTV units. I have three, one of the earlier models with a home brew removable hard drive, that I no longer use. Then two newer ones. One is just used for stuff my wife wants to watch and stuff I like to watch but not save. The the other one is set up to record all my favorate stuff that I burn to DVD.

I'm back into the ATI thing a little more because of a recent problem with my cable feed. My cable TV signal has degraded badly (I'm trying to get the Cable company to fix it) So the ReplayTV mpegs are quite noisy. I went to the ATI because using the Video Soap pre-filtering so I can reduce the noise content and "almost" make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. <grin> Still not great though. But better than the ReplayTV.

The advantage of the ReplayTV is of course it's ease of programming. I never have to worry about missing anything, or setting anything up. I had a couple episodes of Enterprise that I missed some time back. So I programmed the ReplayTV to search and record the show based on the titles. Sure enough, after I had forgotten all about it, one night there was the missing show. Then a week later it found the next one.

Best part is the instant commercial skip. I haven't seen a commercial in about a year now. This also helps to compress viewing time a lot. Yup those ReplayTVs are pretty slick. IMHO much better than the more widely advertised TIVOs.

Rich
Our cable feed has degraded badly since they put the movie chanels on digital .With my ati aiw cards,
dvc2 card and my replay tv i could see the noise line
across the top of the picture The e30 has a filter of some kind, no line across the top. But if i want DVD quality i can only capture off digital movie chanels

I find that the noise from my cable disappeared when I got a digital cable receiver. Somehow the digital cable box cleans up the noise. I get my best captures from the analog channels (2-80) through the digital cable box and the movie channels. These channels are crystal clear and have no macro blocks. All the other digital channels look like VCD or lower SVCD quality (lots of macro blocks), so I stay away from these.
But the digital cable system seems to be different for other cities. My dad has digital cable from a different company in a town a couple hours away and all of the channels seem to have macro blocks.
I'm still amazed that they can fit that much info (tv signals, internet signals) on a single copper wire.

cheers,
gammer